Campaign Management

Accoding to this 2012 predictions article, the sheer fascination of launching social marketing campaigns will subside.  Also discussed are five trends that will impact marketers in the coming year, including behaviorial segmentation, cross-channel attribution, and the negative impact of continue to message dormant email accounts.

Improved segmentation and better targeted content are being credited for the surge in consumer approval of email marketing over the past 12 months, according to the 2011 DMA Email Tracking Study published by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in conjunction with fast.MAP and Alchemy Worx.

The number of consumers reporting that half or more of the marketing emails they receive are of interest to them has increased more than threefold over the past year, from one in ten (9%) in 2010, to one in three (30%) in 2011. Moreover, just one in four consumers now say that only less than 10% of the marketing emails they receive are of relevance to them – down from two-thirds (64%) of consumers in 2010.

Read more about the findings on MyCustomer.com.

This story from Direct Marketing News covers a new DMA report which reveals that marketers will spend $163 billion on direct marketing in 2011, a 5.6% increase from the prior year. Additionally, the DMA projects that direct marketing ROI will reach $12.03 of sales per dollar of expenditures in 2011.

From the Associated Press

The companies all use the same marketing and communications vendor, Epsilon. It's a leading marketing services firm that sends more than 40 billion emails annually and has more than 2,500 clients including seven of the Fortune 10. Epsilon, based in Dallas, issued a brief statement on Friday saying "a full investigation was under way" following the discovery of the breach of some customer client data. The company said that information obtained was limited to names and email addresses and that "no other personal identifiable information associated with the names was at risk."

Epsilon spokeswoman Jessica Simon declined to comment further late Sunday.

The companies affected said Epsilon informed them of the breach and told them the compromised files do not include any personally identifiable information stored with the marketer. However, hackers could use these email addresses to trick customers into providing more personal information such as Social Security numbers.

Best Buy, the nation's largest consumer electronics chain, tweeted a link to a statement Sunday, saying it was doing its own investigation of the breach. It also reminded customers to ignore emails asking for confidential information. And Delaware-based Barclays Bank, which issues Visa credit cards on behalf of L.L. Bean, sent emails to its customers warning of the breach but assured them that their credit card numbers are safe. However, it cautioned they could be subject to spam seeking personal information.

TiVo and Walgreens issued similar warnings Saturday.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and grocery operator Kroger Co, which also use Epsilon to send emails, said Friday they had been affected by the breach. JPMorgan said the files concerned did not include customers' financial details. Kroger said that while a database with customer names and email addresses had been breached, no information connected with consumers' 1-2-3 Rewards MasterCard account had been involved.

Courtesy of the Harvard Business Review blog The Conversation

A lot of us remember when the role of the CMO was much simpler. Information flowed in one direction: from companies to consumers. When we drew up our plans and budgets, the key metric was consumer impressions: how many people would see, hear or read our ad?

Today the only place that approach still works is on Mad Men. Now information flows in many directions, consumer touch points have multiplied, and the old, one-size-fits-all approach has given way to precision marketing and one-to-one communications. Perhaps the most consequential change is how consumers have become empowered to create their own content about our brands and share it throughout their networks and beyond. It has changed my role as the chief marketing and commercial officer at Coca-Cola, and the company's approach to consumer engagement as we work to double our business by 2020.

In the near term, "consumer impressions" will remain the backbone of our measurement because it is the metric universally used to compare audiences across nearly all types of media. But impressions only tell advertisers the raw size of the audience. By definition, impressions are passive. They give us no real sense of engagement, and consumer engagement with our brands is ultimately what we're striving to achieve. Awareness is fine, but advocacy will take your business to the next level. (I used to think that loyalty was the highest rung on the consumer pyramid until I became the CMO of Allstate Insurance. There, I saw clearly that so much business was driven through personal referrals and advocacy by individuals for their agent.)

So, in addition to "consumer impressions," we are increasingly tracking "consumer expressions." To us, an expression is any level of engagement with our brand content by a consumer or constituent. It could be a comment, a "like," uploading a photo or video or passing content onto their networks. We're measuring those expressions and applying what we learn to global brand activations and those created at the local level by our 2,700 marketers around the world. For example, in our 24-Hour Live Session with Maroon 5, we captured impressions (the number of online views) but gained tremendous insights from expressions by our consumers — their comments, input on the song that was being created and what they shared with their networks.

So what are the keys to winning in this new era of empowered, engaged and networked consumers? Here are some of the top "expression" lessons we've learned so far:

Accept that consumers can generate more messages than you ever could. Don't fight this wave of expression. Feed it with content that touches consumers' passion points like sports, music and popular culture. We estimate on YouTube there are about 146 million views of content related to Coca-Cola. However, only 26 million views were of content that we created. The other 120 million views were of content created by others. We can't match the volume of our consumers' creative output, but we can spark it with the right type of content.

Develop content that is "Liquid and Linked." Liquid content is creative work that is so compelling, authentic and culturally relevant that it can flow through any medium. Liquid content includes emotionally compelling stories that quickly become pervasive. Similarly, "linked" content is content that is linked to our brand strategies and our business objectives. No matter where consumers encounter it, linked content supports our overall strategy. When content is both "Liquid and Linked," it generates consumer expressions and has the potential to scale quickly. An example of "Liquid and Linked" was our FIFA 2010 World Cup program, which was the largest-ever Coca-Cola activation in history. More than 160 countries used a common World Cup Visual Identity System, a pool of television commercials, and a common a digital platform. All were linked by the common thread of celebration.

Accept that you don't own your brands; your consumers do. Coca-Cola first learned this lesson in 1985 with the introduction of New Coke, but it's become even more important with the growth of social media. As I write this, Coca-Cola's Facebook page has more than 25 million likes (fans). Our fanpage wasn't started by an employee at our headquarters in Atlanta. Instead, it was launched by two consumers in Los Angeles as an authentic expression of how they felt about Coca-Cola. A decade ago, a company like ours would have sent a "cease and desist" letter from our lawyer. Instead, we've partnered with them to create new content, and our Facebook page is growing by about 100,000 fans every week.

Build a process that shares successes and failures quickly throughout your company. Increasing consumer expressions requires many experiments, and some will fail. Build a pipeline so you can quickly replicate your successes in other markets and share the lessons from any failures. For example, our "Happiness Machine" video was a hit on YouTube so we turned it into a TV commercial, and we've replicated that low-cost, viral concept in other markets.
Be a facilitator who manages communities, not a director who tries to control them. In 2009, we launched Expedition 206. Consumers voted for the three people they wanted to see travel the world as Coca-Cola Ambassadors, visiting most of the 206 countries where Coca Cola is sold and driving an online conversation about what makes people happy around the world. On every step of their 273,000 mile journey, the ambassadors blogged and created all the content. Our role was to facilitate their journey, which was no small task. We had to give up control of the content, so our ambassadors could share their own experiences. In an era of consumer expressions, seek to facilitate and participate with communities, not control them.

Speak up to set the record straight, but give your fans a chance to do so first. Of course, not every consumer expression will be positive. You have to be part of the conversation so you can set the record straight when you need to. Even better, we've found that our fans make online communities self-policing. When our Facebook site was targeted by an activist group whose members posted negative messages, our fans responded with messages of support for our company, and our fans challenged the use of the community for activist purposes.

Marketing has changed dramatically since Doc Pemberton poured the world's first glass of Coca-Cola in 1886. On May 8th, 2011, Coca-Cola and our fans around the world will celebrate our 125th anniversary. While I'll be curious how many impressions our activities generate, I will look most closely to the expressions of our consumers as a better measure of our success in keeping the world's most valuable brand relevant for the next 125 years.

Joe Tripodi leads global marketing, customer management and commercial leadership as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer of the Coca-Cola Company.

Courtesy of the Harvard Business Review blog The Conversation

Courtesy of Mashable

Public relations and marketing professionals have dug themselves into a hole. With the overwhelming amount of PR spin and marketing messages flying at consumers on a daily basis, individuals are constantly on guard, trying to spot the underlying motives behind each claim, motto, message or deal that brands introduce. Many times the assumption by consumers is that marketing messages are motivated by greedy or deceptive intentions. This phenomena is what Ogilvy’s SVP of Global Strategy & Marketing, Rohit Bhargava, called a “believability crisis” during his presentation at Mashable Connect 2011.

“Affinity has become the new secret weapon — we believe in people and companies that we like,” said Bhargava. For those in the public relations and marketing industries, it is important to gain back the trust they’ve lost from consumers by understanding what makes people, ideas and organizations more believable.

Bhargava spoke about what he calls Likeonomics, which “explains the new affinity economy where the most likeable people, ideas and organizations are the ones we believe in, buy from and get inspired by.”

What makes a person or organization believable, then? Bhargava said that Likeonomics is based on being simple, human, brutally honest and emotional.

1. Simple

   To be more believable, the first step is simple and based on personal relationships, said Bhargava. “Be genuine, be honest, be open.” He believes that this concept has powered the social media revolution and the brands that have embraced it.

   Bhargava pointed to Ally Bank as an example of a brand that gets it. Using the slogan “Straightforward,” the bank sheds light on deceptive industry practices and aims for complete transparency on rates and terms. Says one Ally ad, “we make money with you, not off you.”

2. Human

   If you’re trying to build relationships, it’s a good idea to be human. Simply said, but not easily done.

   Bhargava pointed to Innocent, a UK beverage brand that puts a lot of initiative into showcasing the humanity behind its brand. Each winter, Innocent runs the Big Knit, in which Innocent fans knit and send in hats to place on top of its smoothie bottles that are placed in stores. For each hat knitted, the company pledges 25p to Age UK to help make winter warmer for older people across the UK.

   This initiative not only illustrates that the company’s founders care about those around them, but it is also a genius marketing idea. Walk into any grocery store and take a look at the beverage aisle (or almost any aisle). Row after row, you’ll see similarly shaped and colored packages. Now place smoothie bottles with cute knitted hats into the picture — get the point?

3. Brutally Honest

   After ranking last in a consumer preferences survey of national chains in 2009, Domino’s Pizza launched its humility-filled Domino’s Pizza Turnaround campaign, which featured consumers hating on the product. Consumers complained that Domino’s Pizza crust tasted like cardboard and its sauce tasted like ketchup, among other pitfalls. Domino’s listened and its chefs got to work, reinventing a “new pizza.”

   Relationships of any type are based on trust — trust isn’t possible without honesty. Bhargava said that brands must practice “brutal honesty and extreme transparency” in order to “get people over that hump of ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t trust that what you’re doing is anything more than spin.’”

   Bhargava noted that “disclosure is not the same thing as honesty.” Outing the naughty deeds that your company participates in on your annual report isn’t enough.

Read the rest at Mashable

[Posted by James Burr
Senior Presales Consultant, Neolane]

As you read in last week's post, we explained what game-based marketing was and why it's important. Now, we will dive a bit deeper into what's needed to develop a successful, game changing (pun intended) campaign.

So how do you start to bring these playful elements into your marketing campaigns? The first thing you'll want to do is define the goal of your marketing campaign as well as the target audience. It's also important to understand the goals of your target audience and how this game will help them achieve those goals. Then, you need to think about which channels you should use to promote the campaign and entice your targets to participate. Clearly defining the game and the necessary steps the players needs to take in order to achieve the goal will also be important to convey. And don't forget about what the players will win, or how they'll be rewarded along the way.

Remember to share results in between plays to help create competition. Make the game a challenge, but one that your players will enjoy rather than get frustrated and give up. When it comes to rewards, keep in mind that they do not need to be expensive or even of monetary value. Instead, consider sharing insider information with your game leaders or give them a more personalized VIP experience when interacting with your brand. And finally, always anticipate pitfalls and know how to respond if they come about.

Real-World Examples

What types of game-based marketing campaigns have worked? Since this is still an emerging practice, many organizations are still testing the waters in terms of what works and what doesn't. However, I've pulled together a sampling of successful campaigns below, to give you an idea of what's possible:

Spots and Stripes (Cadbury): As the official treat provider of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games, Cadbury organized an online game to help capture that nation's playful spirit and encourage game playing. Leveraging social media channels including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, visitors are asked to pick a team (either Spots or Stripes) and play games of their liking to win points and rewards like delicious Cadbury products.

Chromaroma (TFL): In an attempt to revitalize public transportation in London, Transport for London (TFL) developed an online competition called Chromaroma that uses passengers' travel data and turns it into a game where every journey counts. Passengers can play against fellow travellers and friends and can win points simply by using their Oyster Card within London's transport network. Missions that involve innovative routes and alternative transportation options such as cycling are also rewarded. Foursquare: Quickly becoming one of the most popular ways for consumers and their friends to explore their cities, Foursquare gives accolades for visiting certain locations or visiting all the stores in their immediate vicinity. Visitors can even become “Mayor” of a particular site. Location-based ads are streamed directly to mobile users' devices based on the store or site they are visiting. Achievements are converted into discount codes and vouchers are given to select repeat visitors via Foursquare. NIKEiD: Nike launched its NIKEiD campaign in 2007, which allowed the public to design their own trainers with their photo, shoe and a line written by them. The newly designed trainers appeared in near real-time in NikeTown, on the NIKEiD website and on cube installations on the streets of London. The NIKEiD street cubes also provided studio appointments via Bluetooth, in order to reach a wider audience.

Resources

If you have found this article useful and would like to learn more, I've included a list of websites and books below that offer a wealth of material on the subject. Please add any other resources you feel are helpful or relevant. Happy Gaming!

Gamification Blog Gameful Jane McGonigal, “Reality is Broken” Bernard Suits, “The Grasshopper” Gabe Zichermann and Josilin Linder, “Game Based Marketing”

Marketers are under an increasing amount of pressure to prove ROI while crafting relevant and timely messaging via a proliferation of channels. Industry experts offer advice on how to perform this balancing act.

Courtesy of 1to1media.com

Heightened customer expectations, continuously emerging channels, and economic urgency to produce ROI have placed an unusually high strain on marketers. Trapped in a tug-of-war between various divergent responsibilities, more and more marketers are wearing multiple hats, including that of an analyst, technologist, and creative designer.

Kristin Hambelton, vice president of marketing for Neolane, says that limited human resources, tight budgets, a generation gap, and a void in college curriculum around today's marketing responsibilities, add to the complexity of the situation. "There's a lot going on and add to that the everyday, 'I need to show that I'm driving revenue for the organization,' and it's incredibly hard and frustrating for B2B and B2C marketers," she says.

Although many marketers are responsible for branding, analytics, and daily marketing operations, Hambelton adds that most people excel in one or possibly two areas, but companies typically are challenged to find a marketer who can perform all three functions well. "For marketers, it's always been a balancing act, but what they are balancing has changed," she says. "If it's not one set of things, it's another."

What is a marketer to do? How do they balance their responsibilities of delivering relevant, timely messaging with drilling for KPIs and managing IT complexities?

To help marketers find common ground, Hambelton and other industry experts cite several critical measures marketers should take, including hiring analytically minded employees, assigning cross-functional responsibilities including ownership of the customer experience, and adopting technologies and platforms to automate the analytical processes.

Toni Schottenhammer, Xerox market development manager, says that most marketers also need help conducting the analysis of their marketing data??"especially consider the volumes of information coming from myriad, disparate sources. "There are so many different ways to look at that data, and it's a matter of looking at all of it and figuring out exactly what kind of conclusions you can come to," she says. Now that we're in this new world…its' really going to become more difficult to figure out which approach made [customers] do something."

Kristy Burton, associate director of the honors program at Miami University, has partnered with Xerox to help segment and deliver variable data print and digital campaigns to high school prospects. Burton says that in the past budget constraints had prevented her department from sending multichannel communications to a granular level of segments. Instead they sent static brochures. Now she realizes how time consuming multichannel, data-driven marketing efforts can be. "Without this [technology]," she says, "it would be really difficult not only to maintain the segmentation, but to even do a campaign at all."

According to Jeff Erramouspe, president of Manticore, the challenge requires a meeting of the IT and marketing minds. Organizations, he says, need people in their marketing departments who think analytically and systematically??"but one person may not possess both skill sets. "One of the areas that companies need to include in campaign initiatives is software development. You have to pull those folks over to marketing," he says.

Some organization are creating positions to bridge the IT and marketing chasm. Hambelton has heard murmurs, for example, of the chief marketing technology officer position being formed within some organizations. A CMTO generally possess the skill sets to better manage the intricacies of data, helping to alleviate some of marketing's burdens. "There's this recognition that it might make sense to have a person who has the underpinning and the tools to focus on what marketers do, which is marketing," Hambelton says.

Another bridge between marketing and IT, Hambelton adds, will be greater adoption of technologies to help automate marketing initiatives and eliminate the "heavy lifting" required of marketers to deliver the promised customer experience. "At the end of the day, marketers want the same thing as customers," she says. "They want to drive that customer experience through consistent conversations."

Courtesy of 1to1media.com

Courtesy of FastCompany

The funny thing about comedy is that it works ridiculously well with viral videos. Yet in the it-isn't-creative-unless-it-sells world of B2B marketing, humor is as rare as the one-armed paperhanger, disarming us with unexpected efficacy. Trying to sell in comedy at most B2B companies is like pushing Jell-O up a hill, a raucously sloppy affair, best left for masochists or the jauntiest of jesters.

One such jester is Tim Washer. Currently the Senior Manager of Social Media for Cisco's Service Provider division, Washer has spent the last seven years gaining guffaws where few have dared to tread. A former stand-up, Washer's approach is indeed laughable, helping him to stand out at BDI's recent B2B Social Communications Forum, where he inadvertently revealed these seven rules of viral videos.

1. Strategy is for Stooges
Washer's first big viral success happened back in 2006 while he was at IBM promoting perhaps the unfunniest of all tech products: the mainframe computer. The series called "Mainframe: The Art of Sale" which brilliantly mocks typical sales training videos, garnered hundreds of thousands of views, terabytes of press coverage and unlikely interest among college students-- a happy byproduct of this effort. Reported Washer with refreshing honesty, "I never did sit down and think okay--here's the strategy for the video."

2. There's No Point in Copy Points
"For a comedy video to be successful it needs to be inspired by some artistic idea versus you sitting down with a PowerPoint and saying, 'How do we create a video that does all this for us,'" explained Washer. Recalling the spark behind his first viral hit, which had nothing to do with copy points, Washer remembered, "One time I thought, these are million dollar machines, wouldn't it be silly if a sales person was going through the white pages, cold calling to sell the mainframes."

3. Forget About Closing the Sale
Acknowledging the long sales cycles of complex tech products, Washer is under no delusion that his viral efforts will lead directly to sales. "I don't think we are going to sell any products because of this video [but] hopefully we piqued curiosity." All kidding aside, Washer firmly believes that even in B2B sales, "you are still having a very human connection with somebody at a corporation," thus more than justifying the need for ice-breaking comedy.

4. Lower Your Expectations
Despite having created a number of viral hits for both IBM and Cisco, one thing Washer can never be accused of is over-promising. Noted a straight-faced Washer, "It is important not to burden the project with too many expectations, such as a call to action." Instead, he prescribes a more indirect approach: Driving video viewers to a companion site like a blog rather than to a product page. By continuing with the joke, the marketer increases the chances of ongoing engagement.

5. Metrics aren't Important
Despite having racked up over a million views for his B2B videos including one that remains on ComedyCentral.com, Washer is not a big fan of hard metrics. "We are much more thrilled if an analyst who follows us tweets about the video and just says something positive," he offered. This emphasis on the qualitative impact of comedy is truly what drives Washer. "One of the strongest human connections you can make is to make someone else laugh." explained the all too happy Washer.

6. Don't Take my Partner, Please.
Acknowledging the challenges of cranking out comedy on the cheap, Washer noted that his only flops were when he had to execute without his usual partner for budgetary reasons. "One thing I have learned is the importance of collaboration," noted Washer, who usually teams up with, funny enough, Scott Teems. "We always come up with something much better together. It's not just getting two funny people to work together; it's got to be chemistry, and that's tough to find."

7. Strive for Silly; Root for Ridiculous
Explaining a recent effort for Cisco, the Obsolete TV Support Group, Washer imagined a world of depressed TVs who had been abandoned as families turned to other devices for entertainment. "Being ridiculous will get you attention on YouTube and help you stand out," he added. "Social media is for telling interesting stories; it is not the place to go with a direct marketing message," offered the momentarily serious Washer.

Courtesy of FastCompany

Courtesy of Mashable

While marketing activities on Twitter are often described by silly, Twitterized words ??" like tweetathon, twontest and tweetchat ??" these types of campaigns have proven successful for marketers and brands of all sizes.

There are a number of winning Twitter strategies used by top brands, but those same companies tend to mix up the types of individual marketing campaigns they run on Twitter, whether paid or organic.

Here are seven successful Twitter marketing campaigns from American Airlines, Network Solutions, UNICEF India, IBM, USA for UNHCR, McDonald's Canada and appbackr. Read about their successes below and share your brand's Twitter campaign victories in the comments.

1. American Airlines: Celebrate Successes with a Hashtag

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of its AAdvantage loyalty program, American Airlines ran a Twitter contest called "Tweet to Win 30K Miles."

The Twitter contest was a smaller portion of a larger campaign, called "Deal 30," which involved 30 partner deals and promotions over 30 weekdays. The AAdvantage team created a microsite that promoted a new daily partner deal or promotion ??" the Twitter contest occurred on the fourth day of the promotion. Participants had to register their AAdvantage number on a microsite, tweet the #Deal30 hashtag and follow the @AAdvantage account to enter for a chance to win 30,000 AAdvantage miles.

The campaign was promoted primarily through AAdvantage and American Airlines' social media channels with the goals of driving traffic to the Deal 30 microsite to increase buzz for the remaining deals and to attract new Twitter followers for the recently launched @AAdvantage Twitter account.

Success Metrics: Within one week, the microsite's bit.ly link gained nearly 18,000 clicks via Twitter, and the @AAdvantage Twitter account experienced a 70% increase in followers. And overall, retweets on Twitter increased 43% and the Deal 30 microsite garnered more than 27,000 entries.

Lesson: Weber Shandwick account supervisor and AAdvantage community manager Colin Alsheimer shares his takeaways about the campaign with Mashable: "Given a valuable enough incentive, users will complete several registration steps for entry. The requirement to share a specific tweet and hashtag to an entrants own social network is what drove the success of this promotion, especially given that it wasn't heavily supported by other media channels. In the future, we'd probably require that users take fewer steps for entry in order to increase the total number of entrants. Including a specific and unique hashtag was essential for tracking purposes."

1. Network Solutions: Use Twitter to Promote Larger Social Campaigns

During the 2011 Super Bowl, domain registrar Network Solutions aimed to detract from competitor GoDaddy's risqué media blitz while promoting its .CO product offerings. Instead of directly competing with GoDaddy's substantial Super Bowl ad buy, Network Solutions worked with agency CRT/tanaka to spoof GoDaddy's infamous Super Bowl commercials with hopes of garnering attention on Twitter among social media influencers.

With a $200,000 budget, the company developed a concept around Go Granny, "the original domain girl," and created a series of mockumentary vignettes featuring Academy Award-winner Cloris Leachman.

While the campaign was centered around one parody commercial hosted on YouTube (embedded above), Twitter played a large role in the promotion and success of the campaign.

"Go Granny's antics did not stop on YouTube. She took her sassy personality to drive traffic to the video," says CRT/tanaka director of social media Priya Ramesh. "She took over Twitter for three one-hour long tweetcapades on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Super Bowl weekend. During the tweetcapades, @Go_Granny's tweets were carefully targeted to win the attention of influencers like Guy Kawasaki and Scott Monty, under the premise she was inviting people to her Super Bowl party. The team of powerful mommy bloggers at BlogHer participated in the tweetcapades as well, tapping into their extensive networks."

Success Metrics: In five days, the campaign inspired more than 3,500 tweets and garnered nearly 20 million impressions across Twitter, reports agency CRT/tanaka. On top of that, #GoGranny became a trending topic in Washington, D.C., and top influencers who tweeted about Go Granny included Gina Trapani and Brian Solis. Even more impressive, the company's sales of the .CO domain increased by more than 500% during Super Bowl weekend as a direct result of the campaign.

Lesson: "Twitter is extremely helpful for generating buzz around an online social media campaign, but it needs support from other social outlets as well," says Shashi Bellamkonda, director of social media and PR at Network Solutions. He continues: "For maximum success, Twitter can't stand alone. Beyond tweeting, our team dropped blog posts about the campaign, alerted our Facebook base, sent out an email to our customer, issued a press release and conducted traditional media outreach. We also worked with BlogHer to tap into their extensive network of influential women and mom bloggers. If marketers do their homework and recognize that Twitter campaigns must go hand-in-hand with other efforts, they will increase their overall success. In our case, once the Go Granny tweetcapades started, there was no stopping them."

1. UNICEF India: Show Celebrities Their Impact on Social Good Projects

UNICEF India's agency, OgilvyOne Worldwide, enlisted social agency BUZZVALVE to manage a three-month social media campaign to promote UNICEF's "Awaaz Do" (which means "lend your voice" in Hindi) initiative, an effort to send eight million unschooled Indian children back to education.

"The thrust of our campaign lay in targeting influential personas and celebrities on Twitter," says BUZZVALVE CEO Rohan Chandrashekhar. "A retweet or a mention by them proved crucial for our outreach program and to get word out about the campaign."

Bollywood icons Priyanka Chopra and Shekhar Kapur were among others to tweet about the campaign. BUZZVALVE encouraged their participation by showing them how big of an impact they had on the initiative. Chandrashekhar explains: "We set up a two-way communication channel between us and them, where we were able to show them through our analytics the kind of impact they were having on Twitter and among their followers on every retweet or mention about the campaign. In effect, rather than have them formally 'endorse' the campaign, we helped them 'participate' actively. Our analytics helped them understand their own influence and this acted as an encouragement for them be active campaigners. We thus created an environment for them to engage with us and the 'Awaaz Do' cause directly, by making real-time info about their impact available to them." Success Metrics: During the three-month campaign, the #AWAAZDO hashtag received 1,525 mentions and the @UNICEFIndia Twitter account gained 2,198 followers. The campaign itself received 60,540 impressions on Twitter during the time period, as calculated using Tweetreach. By the end of the campaign, the Awaaz Do website garnered 203,248 signups of people interested in "joining the movement" to help get India's children back to school.

Lesson: Non-profit organizations can increase their celebrity endorsers' activity with a campaign by showing them just how impactful their Twitter involvement is. Sharing analytics with celebrities involved in the campaign can encourage them to share the campaign with their followers more often.

1. IBM: Aggregate & Organize Event Conversation

For Lotusphere 2011, one of IBM's annual user conferences for customers and partners, the tech firm expanded its typical social media strategy and created a social media hub, a single online landing page providing a live stream of blogs, Twitter comments, Flickr photos and videos of keynote sessions and interviews from the conference. To keep chatter organized on Twitter, the company employed the hashtag #ls11.

Success Metrics: By mid-event at Lotusphere 2011, which takes place from January 30 to February 3, there were more than 20,000 tweets tagged with the #ls11 hashtag, and the hub site's video channel had garnered 34,000 views. As of February 15, 2011, there were more than 35,000 tweets with the #ls11 hashtag, and 9,500 of those tweets were retweeted. IBM calculates that the campaign garnered more than 41 million total impressions on Twitter.

Lesson: Whether it's as simple as employing a hashtag or as strategic as creating a social landing page, aggregating and organizing conversation around your brand, especially during events, is key to making a splash on Twitter.

1. USA for UNHCR: Hold a Tweetathon

For World Refugee Day this year, USA for UNHCR held a "tweetathon" as part of its overall Blue Key Campaign, which asks Americans to purchase a symbolic $5 Blue Key pin or pendant to show their support for refugees worldwide and the 6,000 UNHCR staffers who work 24/7 to assist them.

The tweetathon took place on Monday, June 13, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET, seven days before World Refugee Day, and it featured a number of social-savvy "Blue Key Champions" tweeting via their personal Twitter accounts for at least an hour each, while supporting tweets originating from the official @UNRefugeeAgency Twitter handle. Roya Hosseini, wife of The Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini and the Twitter voice of the Khaled Hosseini Foundation (@tkhf) also appeared on the tweetathon as a special guest, which especially increased awareness of the tweetathon and campaign.

Success Metrics: On the day of the tweetathon, 1,524 tweets used the #bluekey hashtag, which is a significant increase over the daily average of 50 that occurred during the rest of the campaign. Traffic to the Blue Key website also increased 169% over the previous high point. Furthermore, more than 50% of key purchases for that week were a result of the tweetathon.

Lesson: A tweetathon can significantly benefit a time-sensitive social good campaign. USA for UNHCR's social media consultant Shonali Burke explains that the campaign experienced a huge bump in activity as a result of using Twitter: "From December 2010 (when the Blue Key site was launched) until April 2011, there were approximately 1,100 keys dispatched. For the duration of the 6-week campaign (May 9 to June 20), there were 2,645 keys dispatched, and significant awareness created via online and social media. That's a huge jump in just 6 weeks."

1. McDonald's Canada: Target Specific Users with a Promoted Account

Agency Golin Harris recently launched a geo-targeted Promoted Account for its client, McDonald's Canada, which was the first brand in Canada to execute such a campaign. The goal was to leverage Promoted Accounts to increase @McD_Canada's average new followers by using a 'suggested follow' that targeted Twitter users via specified keywords and hashtags.

While the client declined to share specific keywords used, citing "the competitive nature of how McDonald's Canada gains followers using Promoted Accounts," it was quite pleased with the results, noting that the use of diverse keywords and hashtags enabled the company to reach viewers of many demographics with many different interests.

Success Metrics: With a total budget of $15,000 USD, McDonald's Canada gained 9,503 new followers over the course of the campaign. The campaign also drew in 14,200 profile views and resulted in a 4% overall engagement rate, which includes retweets, replies, favorites and clicks. This engagement rate is quite high when one considers that advertising click-through rates are generally subzero percentages.

Lesson: Paid advertising on Twitter, including Promoted Tweets, Trends and Accounts, can be an option for brands looking to gain new eyes. Brands should test out various hashtags and keywords to target their desired audience. "The Twitter team acted as a great resource to help McDonald's Canada test out different keywords and bids to gain the greatest amount of new followers," notes Karin Campbell, senior manager of external communications, McDonald's Restaurants of Canada Limited.

1. appbackr: Increase Site Traffic with Promoted Tweets & Accounts

App marketplace appbackr began using Promoted Tweets and Account in mid-May to promote the LSATMax app that is currently on its way to funding its next iteration via the appbackr platform. "The app is directed to people studying for the LSAT, so a 20 to 26 age group roughly," says Sarah Cornwell, product manager at appbackr. "Our online marketing budget for this app was split between Facebook ads and Twitter. In the past, we would have focused entirely on Facebook, but with Twitter, we can watch the impact in bit.ly, and we like that immediate feedback."

Cornwell stressed that creating a targeted campaign on Twitter, instead of targeting a wider audience, gave appbackr the most bang for its buck. "LSATMax lends itself to a targeted campaign. We were able to focus on people on Twitter searching for relevant keywords ??" LSAT, law school, etc. ??" to let them know this app was available as a study tool."

Success Metrics: In six weeks, appbackr has increased its follower count by 140% (from 880 to 2,114) and increased traffic to its site from Twitter by 94%. Furthermore, traffic from Twitter as a percentage of appbackr's total site traffic rose from 2.6% to 4.4%. And of its Twitter from traffic, the percentage of new visits rose from 51% to 65%.

Lesson: Appbackr's campaign with Promoted Tweets and Accounts enabled it to reach a highly targeted audience on Twitter, resulting in an increase in Twitter followers and site traffic.

Courtesy of Mashable